But you must be referring to a particular photo of a document because of references to “so many typos, overtypings, and whited-out letters.”
Vernal galaxy
- Thread starter Falconer
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I assume the reproduction I got from Lincoln Enterprises all those years ago is the same one available to everyone else. It appears to be a photocopy of the original typed draft of the document, complete with the errors and corrections I noted.
There can be a galactic north and south defined by Earth's north and south. In my post number 45 on page 3 I said that the direction to Alpha Centuri is the southern sky of Earth and thus would be in the southern part of the galaxy according to that definition.
But there can also be a galactic north and south pole defined by the polarity of the galactic magnetic field. And I think that astronomers do refer to galactic north and south on diffent sides of he central pane of he galaxy and based on the galactic magnetic field.
IN any case galactic coordiantes have north and south latitudes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_coordinate_system
It is uncertain which of those, if either, is the base for the northern and southern parts of the galaxy in Star Trek.
Possibly you mgiht want to include a photo of that document in a future post, for the benefit of those of us who are only familiar with the corrected version of the document printed in The Making of Star Trek..
Well, for what it's worth, both versions mention the "Pinial Galaxy limit," so it wasn't a mistaken transcription.
Okay, thanks. I believe I have seen various versions of that pitch doc in the GR papers, so wanted to be sure.
EDIT:
Here's the "pineal" bit from a draft that's a bit later, titled Star Trek (Rough Draft Presentation To Writers, Tech People, Etc.) It loses the bogus formula but still has Robert T. [Tiberius?] April and the ship is named Enterprise. We're guessing this is maybe June 1964 based on a memo in the same folder.
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Citation needed.
That a spiral galaxy would have a south goes without saying - all rotating bodies gain a south from their state of motion, this being the backside when one looks down along the rotating axis while observing clockwise motion.
This is how it works on Earth, and magnetic fields have precious little to do with that; the compass needle doesn't really align with north or souch much, and has fundamental trouble deciding which is which in a given epoch anyway.
The Milky Way is a perfectly nicely defined rotating body with an axis that even only wobbles in timescales that would make the longest-lived of civilizations forget who they are. It can be trivially divided in west and east, these being arbitrarily relative. North and south simply call for us to define an absolute centerplane (there being some ambiguity and thus arbitrariness involved there), and current knowledge nucely allows for the "latitude" of Earth to be used for zero latitude, give or take a trivial 50 ly or so. Earth's "longitude" in turn is a fine zero meridian.
In contrast, using Earth's own north and south is fine for dividing the skies, but silly to the extreme in splitting the galaxy, akin to deciding the Equator must be aligned to pass through Berlin and Rome. (Say, pretty much all of the galactic disk would be "south" then.) Any civilization actually using the galaxy for travel would ditch the silliness early on.
North and south should be easy. East and west vs. widdershins and deosil can then be debated. But those are grand lines, and Trek star travel is petty for the most part. There would be room for vernal or, say, brumal in the finer details, which obviously are being discussed in the Talos case anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
This is how it works on Earth, and magnetic fields have precious little to do with that; the compass needle doesn't really align with north or souch much, and has fundamental trouble deciding which is which in a given epoch anyway.
The Milky Way is a perfectly nicely defined rotating body with an axis that even only wobbles in timescales that would make the longest-lived of civilizations forget who they are. It can be trivially divided in west and east, these being arbitrarily relative. North and south simply call for us to define an absolute centerplane (there being some ambiguity and thus arbitrariness involved there), and current knowledge nucely allows for the "latitude" of Earth to be used for zero latitude, give or take a trivial 50 ly or so. Earth's "longitude" in turn is a fine zero meridian.
In contrast, using Earth's own north and south is fine for dividing the skies, but silly to the extreme in splitting the galaxy, akin to deciding the Equator must be aligned to pass through Berlin and Rome. (Say, pretty much all of the galactic disk would be "south" then.) Any civilization actually using the galaxy for travel would ditch the silliness early on.
North and south should be easy. East and west vs. widdershins and deosil can then be debated. But those are grand lines, and Trek star travel is petty for the most part. There would be room for vernal or, say, brumal in the finer details, which obviously are being discussed in the Talos case anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
Citation needed.
Actually, the Galactic Coordinate System used by astronomers is NOT based on rotation. It's based on observation from Earth and uses the Sun's position, the galactic plane and the MW's center to set base parameters. The galactic poles do not sit above the center of the MW's spin. Citation:
https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/G/Galactic+Coordinate+System
That doesn't change the fact that rotating bodies (including the Milky Way) get their north decided as I described. (Although the practice at Sol currently varies a little, so that those bodies that have a spin direction opposite to Earth get forcibly defined the wrong way around - looking at you, Uranus! But that's unlikely to persist once we get outside Sol.)
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Please provide a citation that the term "north" has a standardized definition for all rotating bodies.
The Galactic North Pole is in the Earth's northern hemisphere sky and the Galactic South Pole is in the Earth's southern hemisphere sky. The rotation of the MW was irrelevant to choosing the terms.
Thank you. It says nothing of galaxies or astronomical objects that are not "stars, planets, dwarf planets [or] small Solar System bodies such as comets and minor planets (i.e. asteroids), as well as natural satellites and minor-planet moons." Also note that the terms positive and negative are sometimes preferred instead of north and south.
It's also worth noting that if you applied the right-hand rule used for the smaller bodies to the rotation of the MW, the galactic pole directions would be opposite to what they are defined as.
Shouldn't the directions as defined locally be "spinwards" and "antispinwards", "inward",and "outward"?
A civilization that explored the whole galaxy, or a large part of it, should make its coordinate system based on the centtral point of the galaxy, where the supermassmive black hole is.
Such a civilization should have measurements of the equatorial plane of the galactic disc(s) whch are much more precise than ours are,and he quatorial planet should pass thorough or quite close to the supermassive black hole at the center of hte Milky way Galaxy.
The central axis of the galaxy should be a line passing perpendicularly to the galactic plane through tehe superamssive blac k hole at the center of gravity of the galaxy, an dpointing to the north and south galactic poles as seen from the central spot.
Another line could go from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky way Galaxy to the supermassive black hole at the center of the great galaxy M87, which is at the center of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, which is at the center of the Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies, which hte Local Group of Galaxies is an outlying member of. Thus the supermassive black hole at the center of M87 can be considered to be sort of the center of the local region of the universe.
The line from the center of hte mIlky Way to the poles, and the line from the center ofhte milky way to the center of M87 can form a plane, which will intersects the galactic plane. The line frormed by the intersectin of that plane with the equatorial plane o fhte galaxy cane be extended through the center of the galaxy to the other side. And a line in the galactic plane can cross the center of the galaxy at right angles to the first line.
The polar line and those two line son the galactic plane can be sued to divide the galaxy into eight cube shaped parts, eachof which can d be divided into small cubes, eachof which can be divided into smaller cubes,and so on.
And system of rectangular coordinates with X, Y, and Z axes can be ceated using the center of hte galaxy as the origin point.
It just occurred to me that some months ago there was a thread where I and several others were discussing the fact that some shows and games use the word "Galaxy" improperly to refer to some other kind of group of celestial objects, perhaps grouped in a way that we don't presently have a word for.
Specifically discussed was Pike's claim that the Enterprise was from place that was "on the other end of this Galaxy." If that were literal, the Enterprise would be much farther from home and much more of the Galaxy explored than what later canon claims.
Maybe these weird words used to describe a galaxy in these documents are the full names of this new word, that is, the word of the future that we hear as "galaxy" on the show. That is, it was the Enterprise's mission to explore on of these "things/areas" called a galaxy in dialogue.
A pine-cone sized/shaped area defined within galaxy actually makes sense in that case, instead of just being a nonsense word. Not sure how summertime fits, though.
Specifically discussed was Pike's claim that the Enterprise was from place that was "on the other end of this Galaxy." If that were literal, the Enterprise would be much farther from home and much more of the Galaxy explored than what later canon claims.
Maybe these weird words used to describe a galaxy in these documents are the full names of this new word, that is, the word of the future that we hear as "galaxy" on the show. That is, it was the Enterprise's mission to explore on of these "things/areas" called a galaxy in dialogue.
A pine-cone sized/shaped area defined within galaxy actually makes sense in that case, instead of just being a nonsense word. Not sure how summertime fits, though.
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